Martin Dressler by Steven Millhauser

Author:Steven Millhauser
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307763860
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2010-09-01T10:00:00+00:00

The Fate of the Vanderlyn

FOR THE CHRISTMAS SEASON MARTIN DIRECTED his managers to trim their windows with holly wreaths and cotton snow. They were to make room inside for a Christmas tree trimmed with colored glass balls and clearly visible from the street. He instructed each female employee to wear green and red ribbons in her hair and each male employee to wear a green and red silk flower in his buttonhole. Special Christmas napkins were to be used, beginning on the first of December, and each table was to have a red or green wax candle. Free red and green candy suckers, wrapped in red and green waxed paper twisted at the ends, were to sit in baskets beside each cash register. Martin had found a small candy shop and manufactory on Broome Street willing to supply his cafes with hard candy at the low price of twenty cents a pound, if he ordered one hundred pounds, and he instructed the managers to divide the remaining candy evenly among all employees on the day after Christmas.

Holiday profits from the five Metropolitans were so high that Martin immediately began to lay plans for another cafe in Brooklyn; and in the new year he received from the owner of a big department store an offer to purchase his chain of cafes for a remarkable sum.

His life outside the business had returned to its accustomed round. In the morning Martin rose early, long before Caroline, and took breakfast with Emmeline at a corner table in the restaurant of the Bellingham. In the evening he returned to the hotel at eight or nine to find Caroline and Emmeline and Margaret sitting in the lamplit parlor. For nothing had changed, nothing would ever change, throughout eternity he would step from the lobby into the lamplit parlor where three women sat waiting, while somewhere in another life a marriage took place: her hand in her sunny lap, the carriage creaking, fresh flowers in his mother’s hat. And approaching the women Martin would bend over Caroline and kiss her lightly on her uplifted cheek, while a carriage full of sunlight disappeared into the long afternoon, and sinking into his armchair he felt himself sinking down into deep cool subterranean vaults. There he found himself talking with Emmeline and Margaret, while Caroline sat with half-closed eyes. After a while Emmeline would rise, explaining that she had to get up early, urging the others to stay. And at once Margaret would rise, and slowly Caroline would rise, and then Martin himself would rise, out of the cool vaults into steamheated lamplit air. Together all four would walk to the elevators, together they would ride to the fifth floor. And two by two they would walk down the corridor, two by two they would turn left, and at their doors they would pause and say good night, two by two.

Caroline was tired, always tired. She had begun to complain of pains in her back; and although in the days

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.